“Now he is. Now that his Face is taken down from its pole.”
“That is good news. Be still, please. I am finding the infection.” She nodded at the door, indicating listeners. Mavin sat back and relaxed. There were a few peaceful moments during which the pain lessened, becoming merely a slight twinge, a memory of pain. The throbbing which had pounded in her ears was gone. She sighed, deeply, as though she had run for long leagues.
Then they had done holding hands. The Healer passed her fingers across the wound, already half healed, then across those shallow scrapes around Mavin’s ears. These, too, she Healed, making them tingle briefly as though some tiny, marvelous creature moved about raking up the injured parts and disposing of them.
“Now, what’s afoot?” the Healer asked, brushing the tips of her fingers together as though to brush away the ills she had exorcised. “What can I do?”
“A message must be sent to ... the High Wizard Chamferton telling him his demesne is attacked from the north.” This was loudly said.
“Ah. Do we know who attacks?”
“The attacker is unspecified,” murmured Mavin. Better let Dourso respond to some unknown threat than discount a threat he might know to be false. Loudly: “Unspecified but imminent. He should return here as soon as possible.”
“A messenger sent to him now will reach him by dusk. If he left there at once, the ... High Wizard might return here by midnight.”
“Whatever,” Mavin yawned. “Now, if you have no further need of me, I will take my leave. Send the message quickly, please. Much may depend upon it.”
The Healer gave her one keen glance, then moved away, opened her door to give firm orders to some, quick instructions to others. As Mavin left the place she saw two riders hastening away south in a cloud of dust. She rubbed her face. The area around her ears itched a little, and she smoothed her hair across it self-consciously. Shifters did not make much use of Healers. It had not been as bad an experience as she had thought.
Proom was where she had left him, Proom and his family and his friends. A much wider circle of friends than heretofore. They seemed to enjoy the afternoon, though most of it was spent watching Mavin sleep and explaining to the newcomers that this was, in fact, the Mavin of which many things were sung. Undoubtedly something of interest would occur very soon, and the newcomers were urged to pay close attention. Mavin heard none of it. She had decided to sleep the afternoon away in order to be up and watching at midnight
Night fell, and there was a foray for provisions followed by small fires and feasting. Smoke rose among the trees, dwindled to nothing and died. Mavin rose and led the shadowpeople forth to find a good view of the aerie. Even as they settled upon their perch, Dourso came clattering up to the fortress with Valdon and Valdon’s men making a considerable procession upon the road, two baggage wagons bringing up the rear. A large, grated gate opened at ground level to admit the wagons, the horses and most of the men. Valdon and Dourso climbed to the door Mavin had used, and not long afterward she saw lights in the highest room of the tower.
“May neither of them have time to get their breath back,” Mavin intoned, almost enjoying herself. She had found a grassy hollow halfway up the outcropping on which the aerie stood. She could see the road, the aerie, the doorway—even the roof of the melon patch gleaming a glassy silver in the moonlight. “Now Dourso will be looking north to see what comes.” She sipped at the wine the Healer had given her, offering some to Proom. He took a tiny taste and handed it back, nose wrinkled in disgust. “Well, beastie,” she commented, “to each his own taste. I’ve never really liked those stewed ferns everyone cooks each spring, though most people consider them delicious. Now. What’s that upon the road?”
It was an ashen shadow, a bit of curdled fog, a drift of clotted whey. It moved not with any steady deliberation but in a slow, vacillating surge, like the repeated advance of surf which approaches and withdraws only to approach once more. Though Mavin sharpened her eyes, she could see no detail. It came closer with each passing moment, the shadowpeople staring at it with equal intensity.
“Lala perdum, dum, dum,” Proom whisper-sang. “Ala, la perdum.”
“I don’t know what perdum is.” Mavin stroked him. “But I’m sure we’re going to find out.”
“Perdum.” Proom shivered as he climbed into Mavin’s lap. She had seen him thus disturbed only once before, many years ago in the labyrinth under Hell’s Maw, and she closed her arms protectively around him. “It’s all right, Proom. Whatever it is, it isn’t coming for us.”
The cloud came nearer, still in its clotted, constant surge and retreat. She peered in the dim light, suddenly knowing what it was. “Faces,” she cried. “All the Faces. There must be thousands of them. And they have their eyes open!”
Through the milky cloud she could make out Arkhur’s form on horseback, with the striding Harpy behind him as he set the pace for the floating Faces in their multitude. Proom whispered from her lap, a hushed, horrified voice. She could see why. The mouths of the Faces were open as well, hungering.
From the high tower the northern windows flashed with light, now, again, again. Whoever watched from there did not see the threat approaching on the southern road. Mavin had time to wonder how the Faces would assault the fortress, or whether they would simply besiege the place. She did not wonder long. The cloud began to break into disparate bits, a hundred Faces there, a dozen here, here a line trailing off up the stony plinth like a dim necklace of fog, there a small cloud gathering at the foot of the great door. There was no frustration of their purpose. The door presented no barrier to their paper thinness. They slipped beneath it easily, as elsewhere they slipped through windows and under casements, between bars and through minute cracks in stone. Within moments all were gone.
Silence.
Silence upon the height, the light still flashing to the north.
Silence within the aerie, the stables, the armories.
And then tumult! Screams, shouts, alarm bells, the shrill wheeing of a whistle, the crashing sound of many doors flung open as people tried to flee.
Did flee. Down the steps of the fortress, out of the great gates. Beating with arms and hands as though at a hive of attacking bees while the Faces clustered thickly upon those arms, those hands, around mouths, clamped upon throats. A man ran near the hollow where Mavin sat, screaming a choked command as a Face tried to force its way into his throat. It was Valdon, all his arrogant dignity gone, all his Princely power shed, running like an animal while the Faces sucked at him with pursed, bloody lips, to be struck aside, only to return smiling with manic pleasure as they fastened upon him once more.
Mavin turned away, unsure whether she was fascinated or sick. On the flat below ran a half-dozen others, Dourso among them, so thickly layered with Faces it was only their clothes which identified them. Some of Valdon’s men. Some of Dourso’s. Yet even as these ran and choked and died beneath the Faces, others walked untouched. The Healer, quiet in her white robes, came down the steps to stretch her hand toward Arkhur, to cling first to his hand and then to his body as though she had not thought ever to see him again. So, thought Mavin. So that is what that is all about. Something in her ached, moved by that close embrace.
Valdon had fallen. One by one the Faces peeled away, eyes closed once more, mouths shut. Misty on the air they hung, fading, becoming a jelly, a transparency, a mere disturbance of sight and then nothing. Unable to stop herself, she went to the place the body lay, prodded it with her foot. It swayed like a bundle of dried leaves, juiceless, lifeless.
“There are two ways to dispose of the Faces,” said Chamferton’s voice from behind her. “To dissolve them in running water, or to let them regain whatever life was taken from them. Come in and we will see what has been done.” He turned toward the fortress and Mavin followed, the shadowpeople staying close by her feet. The Harpy stalked behind them without a sound, but still Mavin shuddered to come near her. They passed up the great stairs, through the door, down a
long, echoing corridor to stop before a narrow door behind an iron grate. On this door, Chamferton knocked slowly.
“Who’s there,” quavered an old voice. “Who is it there?”
“Who is it there?” Chamferton responded.
“I?” asked the weak old voice, wonderingly. “I? Why I am Rose-love of Betand ...”
Behind them the Harpy slumped dead to the floor.
“What’s in there?” asked Mavin, not really wanting to know.
“The tombs of my demesne,” said Chamferton. “Healer? Will you have her taken out of there and up to her sister’s room? Chances are she will not live out a year, but such time as it is, it is hers. Recovered from Dourso’s blood and bone.
“None of the Faces has lost life. The Faces themselves are gone. Valdon and Dourso are dead. Foulitter is dead. Only Pantiquod was left behind at the lake, and she fled before I could bind her. I believe she has gone to the south, Mavin. It is unlikely she will return to the north.”
Mavin heard him without hearing him. She wanted to believe what he said.
They found the room Mavin remembered from her prior visit, and there were summoned the people remaining in the place, many of them suffering from wounds or minor enchantments. Some were Healed, some disenchanted, wine was brought, and while the shadowpeople roamed about the room, poking into everything—surprisingly free of the place, inasmuch as Mavin had never seen them enter human habitation before—Chamferton turned the talk to Singlehorn.
“It will be a search of many days, I fear,” he said in a tired voice, obviously not relishing further travel. She saw the way his eyes searched the shelves, the corners, knowing that he found it defiled and would not be content until he could replace it as it had been. “A search of many days.”
“No,” Mavin said. “It shouldn’t take that long. I could find him almost at once if I could only tell the shadowpeople what he looks like. I can convey only so much in mime. Trying to describe the beast is beyond me.”
The Healer had followed all this with interest, though never moving from Chamferton’s side. For his part, he seemed to be conscious of her presence as he might be conscious of his own feet or ears, giving her no more of his attention than he paid those useful parts. She laid her hand on his arm.
“Old Inker is still here, Arkhur. Couldn’t he do a picture for the little people?”
So in the end it was very simple. Mavin described while an old, sleepy man drew a picture, this way and that until he had it right; then he put it in her hand and staggered back to his bed.
“I will come with you,” offered Chamferton without enthusiasm, examining a pile of books.
“No,” she said, knowing he would be little help. If he came with her, his mind would be here. “The shadowpeople will find him. I have only to follow. But I would like to know one thing, High Wizard, before I go.”
“If I know whatever it is.”
“What is the tower? The one where you were dropped? What are the shadows? Why did Himaggery want to find it, and how did he get in without being eaten?”
He stared at her for such a time that she felt he had stopped seeing her, but she stood under that gaze neither patiently or impatiently, merely waiting. Proom and his people were lying quietly about, silent for once, perhaps composing a song to memorialize the destruction of the Lake of Faces.
When he replied it was not in the ponderous, Wizardly voice she had begun to associate with him. It was rather doubtful, tentative.
“Do not talk of it, Mavin. When Himaggery is brought back to himself, discourage him from having interest in it. Though I have read much, studied much, I understand very little. I will say only this ...
“Before men came to this world—or to this part of the world, I know not which—there were others here. There was a balance here. You may say it was a balance between shadow and light, though I do not think what I speak of can be described in such simple terms. One might as well say power and weakness, love and hate. Of whatever kind, it was a balance.
“There was a symbol of that balance. More than a symbol; a key, a talisman, an eidolon. A tower. In the tower a bell which cannot ring alone. Ring the bell of light, and the shadow bell will sound. Ring the shadow bell and the daylight bell will resonate. So was the balance kept. Until we came. Then ... then something happened. Something withdrew from this world or came into it. The tower disappeared or was hidden. The bell was muffled ...
“An imbalance occurred. Does the real tower still exist? Is the bell only muffled? Or destroyed? Does something now ring the shadow bell, something beyond our understanding?
“Mavin, do not speak of this. In time the balance must be restored or the world will fail. But I think the time is not now, not yet. Any who attempt it now are doomed to death, to be shadow-eaten. So—when you have brought Himaggery to his own once more, do not let him seek the tower.”
Mavin heard him out, not understanding precisely what he attempted to say—and knowing that he understood it no better than she—yet assured by her own sight and hearing that he spoke simple truth as it could be perceived by such as they. She, too, had seen the shadows. She, too, had heard the sound of their presence. It was not the time.
“I will remember what you say, Arkhur,” she promised him. Then she took leave of the Healer, accepting many useful gifts, and went out into the dawn.
Chapter Eight
At Chamferton’s invitation—though it was actually the Healer who thought of it—Mavin took several horses from the stable beneath the rock. None was the equal of Prettyfoot, but any at all would be easier than walking. She rode one and led three, the three ridden—or better, she thought, say “inhabited”—by Proom and his people. They did not so much ride as swarm over, up and down legs, around and across backs. The horses, at first much astonished and inclined to resentment, were petted into submission. Or perhaps talked into submission. Mavin had a sneaky belief surpported by considerable evidence that Proom spoke horse as well as fustigar, owl, flitchhawk, and a hundred other languages.
She showed Proom the picture of Singlehorn only after they had found the place from which the Fon-beast had bolted, a place in the woods still some distance northwest of the Lake of Faces (former Lake of Faces, Mavin said to herself, trying to think of a good name for it now). He looked at it with obvious amusement, then passed it around to the accompaniment of much discursive lalala, snatching it back when one infant attempted to eat it.
The search was immediately in motion, with a dozen shadowpeople up as many trees, all twittering into the spring noonday. They descended after a time to swarm over their steeds once more, pointing away to the west and urging Mavin to come along. Calls kept coming throughout the afternoon, always from the west, as they proceeded into the evening until the forest aisles glowed before them in long processionals of sun and shade, the sky pink and amber, flecked with scaly pennants of purple cloud. None of them had slept for a full day and night. Though the guiding song had not yet fallen silent there was general agreement—not least among the horses—that it was suppertime.
They built a small fire and ate well, for the Healer had sent packed saddlebags with them, bags full of roast meat and cheese, fresh baked bread and fruit from Chamferton’s glasshouses.Then they curled to sleep—except that they did not sleep. The shadowpeople were restless, getting up again and again to move around the mossy place they had camped upon, full of aimless dialogue and fractious small quarrels. Finally, just as Mavin had begun to drift away, one of them cried a sharp, low tone of warning which brought all of them up to throw dirt upon the coals of the fires.
“Sssss,” came Proom’s hiss, and a moment later tiny fingers pressed upon her lips.
It took time to accustom her eyes to the dark, though she widened them as much as she could to peer upward in the direction all the little faces were turned, ears spread wide, cocked to catch the least sound.
Then she heard it. The high, shrill screech of a lone Harpy. A hunting cry.
“Panti
quod,” she whispered, questioning their fright.
“Sssss,” from Proom. A shadowperson was pouring the last of Mavin’s wine on the fire while others peed upon it intently, dousing every spark and drowning the smoke.
“Why this fear?” she asked herself silently. “They played tag with Foulitter upon the hill near the lake. They led her into a trap without a moment’s hesitation, yet now they are as fearful as I have ever seen them.”
The horses began an uneasy whickering, and a dozen of the little people gathered around them, talking to them, urging some course of action upon them and reinforcing it with much repetition. Mavin did not understand their intention until the horses trotted away into the darkness, returning as they had come.
“No!” she objected. “I need ...”
“Ssss,” demanded Proom, his hands tightening on her face.
Then she saw them. A line of black wings crossing the moon, beat on beat, as though they breathed in unison, moving from the northeast. From that purposeful line fell a single hunting call, as though only a lone Harpy hunted there upon the light wind. Beat on beat the wings carried them overhead, and as they passed directly overhead Mavin heard a low, ominous gabble as from a yard of monstrous geese.
They waited in silence, not moving, scarcely breathing. After a long time, Mavin tried again. “Pantiquod?”
Proom showed his teeth in a snarl. “Perdum, lala, thossle labala perdum.”
“Perdum,” she agreed. “Danger.” The little ones took this word and tried it out, “ger, ger, ger,” decided they did not like it. “Perdum,” they said, being sure all of them were in accord. Mavin thought not for the first time that she must learn Proom’s language. Perhaps—perhaps there would be a time of peace while she waited for her child to be born. Perhaps then. She considered this possibility with surprising pleasure. It was ridiculous not to be able to talk together.
Be that as it may, she could appreciate the danger. One Harpy could be teased, baffled, led on a chase. Perhaps two or three could be tricked or avoided. But more than that? All with poisonous teeth and clutching talons? No doubt Pantiquod had learned of Foulitter’s death and was out for vengeance. “Fowl, bird-brained vengeance,” she punned to herself, trying to make it less terrible. Proom had sent the horses away because they were large enough to be seen from the skies. So long as those marauders ranged the air, travel would have to be silent, sly, hidden beneath the boughs. She hoped that Singlehorn was not far from them and had not chosen to wander down into the plains or river valleys where there would be no cover.